Snow pelted the Hunters as they burst free of the program. They slid down the steep muddied incline, barely managing to keep their footing. In a sliding gallop, Seth reached for the sleeping trees to slow his momentum, accepting their cranky bites. The sent of fresh blood stung Astral’s teeth forcing her to grimace against the obscure mental to physical association.

Astral anchored her will to her feet, visualizing the sigil she had carved into to soles of her boots. Her feet entrenched themselves into the snow, driving into the earth as she spun around to face the first wave of husks that vomited from the program’s mouth. The opening was narrow and small, impossible for the larger constructs to pursue them; a small blessing that might work against her in the future. She’d rather deal with the war machines now rather than at a time that favoured the demon lord’s terms.

She visualized the sigil at her toes, charging it for a long second before she released it with her grounding spell. She launched with practiced ease, spinning in the air to change course, and altered her trajectory using the weight of her scythe.

Hunter and weapon crashed into the opening, breaking the large chunks of stone and slab. The escaped husks charged after Seth, a retreating beacon of spiritual light among the slow flowing energy of the trees. He hadn’t stopped to look back, at least, she hoped he didn’t.

Choices. Save Seth or finish dismantling the access point. Astral took a moment to assess what she had available. Apart from her weapon, her standard game kit had been submitted for inspection and locked away in the squad locker. She hadn’t had time to restock before arriving at the tower. She hadn’t anticipated that a second threat lingered beyond the ghost.

Astral’s core phased into existence next to her surveying the scene. She wondered for the first time what its connection was to the demons, as its pattern for manifestation occurred while in infected areas. ‘Worst case scenario. Clearwater.’ It told her.

Clearwater. She could have sworn her core had been real person during that time. She couldn’t remember a face, just a solid presence of a person, no different from Mathias or her father. She glared at the entity. Nothing it said could be trusted. It had a way of boxing her in and limiting her options until the only choice she could make was what it wanted.

“You knew about the other demon!” Astral hissed if only to convey that she felt betrayed. It was pointless arguing with her core as it was indifferent. It was a mistake to acknowledge it, talking to it would only encourage it to carry on using her like a puppet.

‘There was only one demon,’ her core said, its voice a distant echo that sounded like it was talking to her from the bottom of well.

She closed her eyes to force it from her sight. She felt it watching. Was she too weak to fight it off? Could she handle an assault from demon spawn and her core? What if it took her over again? She swallowed her dread. Would confronting it matter? Would telling it that it violated her by using her body as a tool stop it from using her? How much control did she really have? The thought that she wasn’t in control of her thoughts, of her body, was overwhelming. Was there going to be a day when she was the passenger in her own life as her core took the driver’s seat? What if everything she was doing was in preparation for that day?

She wanted to cry, but she needed to focus. Reducing the demon’s access to the outside world was critical. Sleep called to her, clawing at her tired muscles and veiling her head with the promise of a dizzying comfort, that only exhaustion fueled rest could bring.

Seth’s arrival in the program was a blessing, though she’d never tell him that. He saved her life tonight. She owed him, but for the time being, he needed to learn how to save himself.

She focused her energy on her spell, praying that it wouldn’t deplete the last of her energy. Thoughts of her core assuming control creeped in. It was important that she managed the strength of her spell and pulled in as much resources as she could from her environment. The path was narrow with thousands of husks in her way. Husks were squishy, but a little more durable than human. The husks didn’t react to damage. A body under someone else’s control wouldn’t react to pain; it wasn’t like the new driver was integrated into the system to be able to feel it.

That meant she needed enough force to penetrate bodies, stone, and potentially steel. She called to the elements closest to her, weakening the collapsed entrance as undead hands pushed through to explore the cold night air before finding broken remains of the structure. She pulled the elements from the air; hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, releasing what she didn’t need back into the world. She could transform the elements into something useful, but that process required more time and energy than she could allow.

She didn’t need her spell to go far, or else she’d risk creating an opening somewhere inside of the Academy campus.

“No pressure”, she told herself as she visualized the alchemic glyphs of the elements she needed, repositioning and resizing the symbols to draw energy in the right quantities. She bound one sigil to another with a smooth arcing line, a slow feed from one element to the next, until all elements were connected. Too strong of a feed, required a reverse loop, feeding the energy back to drain some of the spell’s potency. She hated chemistry. Physics was less terrible, but required a lot pre-planning of situation based scenarios and math. Lots of math. With the base components setup, she’d have to pull the remainder from herself.

She inhaled the cold winter air. Seconds had passed since had she begun harnessing the elements and designating their flow. The husks shifted the ruble. The shield of arcane wizardry hovered in front of her, waiting for release. She had reached a point in her arcane practice where she didn’t need to move to manifest her elements, like drawing the symbols onto an infinite chalkboard. To the world, to normal people, nothing hovered in wait. On occasion they might feel it, like a wash of cold air or a rush of static, but for the most part magic went largely unnoticed.

She waited for the ruble to breathe, shifting out like a heart beat, settling in, and then burst open as the hungry dead launched into the open. She released her spell from its container. A large beam consumed everything in its path, barring down the tunnel for as far as the summoned energy would allow, taring through the surging dead.

3… 2… 1… Her scattered time bomb broke the beam apart, cutting through the tunnel’s walls as it burst into hundreds of small lasers. The ground shook as the tunnel collapsed. As the dust settled everything was quiet.